TROOPS -- GI Resistance Then and Now

U.S. troops are being called on to enforce this violent occupation against the people of Iraq. We know what they are going through, not knowing who is friend or foe, being ordered to kill anything that moves, happening upon the corpses of dead women, children, old men you have strafed. Or worse yet the whimpers and screams of those not yet dead. All the while, you can't even fall back on your ideological reasoning for all this killing because the hype at home is also disintegrating. U.S. troops are taking serious casualties and the body bags are indeed coming home. The occupation of Iraq is taking its toll on the troops there. The bullshit about liberating the Iraqi people is hitting home. It's safe to say troop morale is at its lowest point since the Vietnam War. This is in no small part due to the well documented shoddy treatment the U.S. military extends to it's own. U.S. military resistance is nowhere near Vietnam days or where it needs to be, but there is notable resistance. [See Some of the New Generation of Real Heroes.]

Thousands are applying for CO status, most of which are ignored as the military doesn't even follow its own law. The GI rights hotline, 1-800-394-9544, that helps answer GIs questions about their rights and how to get out of the military, has gone from 1700 calls a year in 1996 to over 21,000 calls a year in 2002. During the buildup, invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq they received double that number, more than 3,500 calls a month. The U.S. military is admitting at least 600 soldiers are AWOL or deserted. Some counts are as high as 1700.

Individuals are stepping forward and becoming important representatives for GI resistance, Camilo Mejia (Conscientious Objector in the National Guard) is one such hero, "I did not sign up for the military to go halfway around the world to be an instrument of oppression." "I don't think we're fighting terror in Iraq. I think we're fighting for oil. The justification for this war is money and no soldier should go to Iraq and give his life for oil."

GI resistance during the Vietnam War was so prevalent that the government itself had to admit the ground forces had become "unreliable." The military was said to be "disintegrating." This is well documented in articles like "The Collapse of the Armed Forces," by Col. Robert D. Heinl, Jr. in the Armed Forces Journal 6/7/1971. The Vietnam War resistance had at least 144 underground GI newspapers and 14 "GI dissent" organizations. There were GI coffee houses around many of the major bases. Religious people were providing sanctuary to resisters. There was an organized underground railroad to get youth and GIs to safe-houses and to Canada so they wouldn't be sent or returned to Vietnam. In-country there was a broad range of resistance including desertions, mutinies, out-and-out fraggings (killing of officers), combat refusals, entire companies fasting in protest of the war (including officers), search and evade missions to just "gumming up" the works. This, along with the primary factor of how the NLF fought the war, contributed to the eventual defeat of the U.S. by Vietnam.